n. a brief show (music or dance etc) inserted between the sections of a longer performance

n. a short piece of instrumental music composed for performance between acts of a drama or opera

Etymologies

Italian, from Latin intermedius, intermediate; see intermediate.

(American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

From Italian intermezzo. (Wiktionary)

Examples

To make this even more tedious, on page 397 (twenty-one pages after Rothko first walked into the ship's bar) there is a kind of intermezzo between these two redundant descriptions of that first night out, in which we are told: "In May of 1959 Mark and Mell Rothko were preparing to leave New York for their second trip to Europe."

Mr. van Houten worked 20 years for Philips before returning to the Dutch company in October 2010 after a four-year intermezzo serving as CEO of NXP Semiconductors—which Philips spun off in 2006—and an independent consultant for Dutch bank and insurer ING.